he informs us,

yet, in the course of a very few pages, that the beast is evidently the little horn, which he had already proved with irrefragable arguments to be the Papacy. Now the beast is said by St. John to be the same as his own last head: hence the Bishop, having pronounced the beast to be the little horn or the Papacy, of course pronounces the Papacy to be the last head likewise: that is to say, he makes a spiritual power to be the last head of the beast, and consequently the whole beast, notwithstanding he had declared that this very beast is a secular empire.

"Respecting this opinion it may be observed, that, if the beast be a secular empire, it is impossible that his last head, which is identified with himself, should be a spiritual power; because, if that were the case, the beast would no longer be a secular empire, but a spiritual one. Popery indeed, like Mohammedism,is symbolized, merely as an ecclesiastical kingdom, by a horn originally small, and afterwards becoming so powerful as to have a look more stout than its fellows, and as to influence the actions of the whole beast; nor is there any inconsistency in representing symbolically what has really happened, namely the rise of an ecclesiastical kingdom out of a secular em-` pire; but I can form no idea how it is possible, that the papal horn should be considered as the last head of the secular beast, when that head is declared to be the same at its first rise as the whole secular beast himself. The Pope can only be the last head of the secular beast either in his spiritual or in his secular character. He cannot in his spiritual; because the last head of the beast is to be the whole beast; and no ingenuity can shew, that an ecclesiastical kingdom, as such, is the same as a secular empire. He cannot in his secular, as sovereign of St. Peter's patrimony: both because it is unreasonable to esteem a petty temporal prince the head of a great secular empire; and because, as I have just observed, the last head was to be the whole secular beast at its first rise, which the Pope as a temporal prince never was.

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"I am perfectly aware, that to this objection, Bishop Newton would reply, that the Pope is "the head of the state as well as of the church, the king of kings, as well as the bishop of bishops;" that there is no contradiction in a person being at once the head both of the state and the church; and consequently that the Pope, although a spiritual character, may be justly esteemed the head of the secular beast in his capacity of "king of kings." I am aware likewise, that the canonists assert, that "there is no sovereign power but in the Pope;" and that the Popes have repeatedly maintained, that all regal authority is derived from them, as in that remarkable instance when Boniface the eighth wrote to Philip the Fair, "We will have thee know that thou art subject to us both in temporals and spirituals." But to all such arguments as these the answer is sufficiently obvious: there is a very wide difference between only claiming and really possessing temporal supremacy. Now the Popes have been sufficiently importunate in claiming the title and authority of king of kings;" and, had they succeeded in establishing such a claim, I could readily have allowed that they might be, what Bishop Newton supposes them to be, the last head of the secular beast: but, if we consult history, we shall find that the very reverse is the case: the claim has often been made, but it has never been allowed by the great European powers: consequently, if it has never been allowed, but on the contrary strenuously resisted, with what propriety can we admit the scheme, which makes the Pope to be the last head of the secular beast, as being "the head of the state as well as of the church, the king of kings as well as bishop of bishops?"

"When Pope Hildebrand excommunicated and deposed the Emperor Henry, that prince called an assembly, and asked their opinion respecting the pretended right of the Pope to depose an Emperor: upon which, all, both Germans and Italians, unanimously pronounced, that the Pope, instead of having

power over the Emperor, owed him obedience. So likewise, although the Emperor Frederic condescended to hold the Pope's stirrup, he first declared, that this was no mark of homage, but only a compliment paid to his holiness as the spiritual representative of Christ. The same Emperor, in order to shew his independence of the Pope, repudiated his wife by his own authority: and, when the Pope had presumed to assert that he bestowed upon him the Empire as a fief of the holy see, he published a manifesto, in which he openly gave the lie to all those who should dare to say, that he held his crown of any other than God himself, declaring that he would rather resign it al-. together than suffer it to be debased in his possession. In a similar manner, when Pope Innocent the third excommunicated and deposed the Emperor Philip, the German nobility of his party complained in a letter to the Pope, that his holiness had intermeddled in the election of a king of the Romans, contrary to the rights of the German princes and the duty of his own pontificate, which originally depended upon the imperial crown. So again, when Pope Honorius threatened to excommunicate the Emperor Frederic the second, on account of his expelling from their sees some Bishops who were creatures of the Pope, he was plainly informed, that the Emperors had always possessed an authority and sovereign jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical state, that his grandfather and father had maintained this jurisdiction in full force, and that he neither could nor would divest himself of it to the prejudice of the Empire and his The Emperor Albert indeed was compelled by the exigencies of the times to own, that kings and emperors received the power of the temporal sword from the Pope: but afterwards when Pope John declared the imperial dignity to be a fief of the holy see, the Emperor Louis assembled all the learned men of Germany, both of the clergy and the laity, to give their opinion of the bull which contained such a claim. These all concluded, that it was

successors.

unjust, unreasonable, and contrary to the Christian religion, as tending to abolish the sovereign power of princes; and the states of the Empire requested the Emperor to take care, that the imperial dignity should not be trampled upon, nor the Germanič liberty reduced to bondage. Finding however that the Popes still from time to time renewed their pretensions, the princes of the Empire, ecclesiastical as well as secular, at length enacted the famous constitution by which the Empire was declared to be forever independent of the Pope.

"If from the Empire we pass to Hungary, we shall find, that the temporal supremacy of the Pope was in the year 1303 so steadily resisted in that country, that his holiness himself was excommunicated by the Hungarian Bishops, in consequence of his having presumed to lay the city of Buda under an interdict, because his pretended right to dispose of the crown of that kingdom was resolutely denied.

"In our own country, when Pope Hildebrand summoned William the Conqueror to do homage for the kingdom of England, as a fief of the Roman see, William replied, that he held his crown only of God and his own sword; and, when the nuncio threatened him with the censures of the church, he published an edict, forbidding his subjects to acknowledge any Pope but such as he should approve, or to receive any order from Rome without his permission. England indeed submitted to the Pope in the disgraceful reign of king John: but in that of his successor the English agents at the council of Lyons protested against the act, and declared that John had no right without the consent of his barons to reduce the kingdom to so ignominious a servitude.

"As for France, when Boniface the eighth claimed a temporal superiority over Philip the Fair, the states of the kingdom formally disavowed the authority of the Pope, and maintained the independent sovereignty of that Prince.

"So likewise, when Gregory the seventh claimed the same superiority over the different kingdoms of Spain, Don Alonso and the other sovereigns unanimously declared, that they were independent princes, and would own no superior upon earth.

"Thus it appears, when we descend to facts, upon what very slender grounds Bishop Newton makes the Pope to be the last head of the secular beast, "the head of the state as well as of the church, the king of kings, as well as the bishop of bishops."

"Nor is this the only objection to which the system of Bishop Newton is liable. In a prophecy of Daniel already considered, four great beasts or universal empires, are described as rising successively out of the sea. The last of them, like the apocalyptic beast now under consideration, is said to have ten horns, to be exceeding terrible, and to be different from those which preceded it. Hence I collect, that the fourth beast of Daniel, and the first beast of St. John, are designed to symbolize the same power. No doubt however is entertained, that Daniel's fourth beast is the Roman empire; it follows therefore, agreeably to Bishop Newton's original proposition, that St. John's first beast is the Roman empire likewise, at some period or other of its existence. Now this fourth beast of Daniel is said to have a little horn springing up among his ten larger horns: which little horn has been shewn to be the Papacy, and if Daniel's fourth beast be not the Papacy, but the Roman empire out of which the Papacy sprung; St. John's first beast, being the same as Daniel's fourth beast, must assuredly be the Roman empire likewise, and therefore cannot be the Papacy. To me, I must be free to confess, it is a matter of no small wonder, that the first beast of St. John should ever have been thought to symbolize the Papacy; for, if this beast be the same as Daniel's fourth beast, a point maintained even by Bishop Newton himself, he certainly cannot be likewise the same as only the little horn of that very identical beast. The reason is manifest: such a